Legacies (41 page)

"We covered the whole area around the ravine," he reported. "There's no more hiding out, or we would've spotted them."

"Post your sentries and have the rest of the men return to camp," Lije said.

With a nod, the sergeant rode off. Lije gathered up the reins to his horse and prepared to remount. The unpleasant but necessary task of searching for survivors was over. As he swung into the saddle, he heard the plopping sound a frog makes diving into the water. His horse snorted and pricked its ears at the rushes along the left side of the runoff pool. A small arcing wave spread across the pond's surface, part of a concentric ring that had its beginnings in the tall grassy reeds.

Cautiously, Lije studied the area, aware that his horse continued to watch it. In war a man learned to obey his instincts; sometimes they were all that kept him alive. Slowly, Lije unholstered his gun and walked his horse around the pool, keeping to the thick grass and soft ground to muffle the sound of its hooves.

When he neared the very edge of the rushes, a head surfaced in the center of them.

"Step out. Now!" Lije drew back the hammer on his revolver. The man jerked his head around, and Lije stiffened in recognition. "Ike."

Ike stared back, water lapping softly around his neck. Lije's mind flashed to his boyhood times when the two of them had grown up together. Then he thought of Deu and Phoebe.

He eased the hammer forward and holstered his gun, then glanced at the lowering sun. "Once it's,dark, you should have a couple hours before the moon comes up," Lije said softly. "Luck to you, Ike."

He didn't look back as he swung his horse away from the pool and headed to camp. All the way, he kept telling himself he had done the right thing—the only thing he could. Dammit, he owed Ike at least a chance.

Spotting The Blade near the lip of the ravine, Lije rode over to make his report. The Blade didn't glance around. "We secured the perimeter," Lije began, then saw Deu in the ravine below, kneeling beside the body of a colored soldier and gently folding the dead man's arms across his chest. He frowned. "Who—"

"Shadrach," came the grim answer, followed by a heavy sigh and a turn of the head as The Blade surveyed the other bodies scattered over the ravine, his jaw clenched.

Lije guessed what his father was thinking. "You won't find his body." Instantly, he had The Blade's full attention, his probing gaze sharp with question. "You can tell him Ike's alive."

"How—"

"Let's just say I know and leave it at that."

The Blade nodded slowly in agreement. A hint of a smile glimmered in the blue of his eyes. Lije smiled back, then turned his horse and started for camp.

 

When night swallowed the last rays of twilight, Ike dragged himself out of the rushes. Shivering and half-numb with soaking-wet cold, his arm wound throbbing, he crawled away from the pool, making as little noise as possible. There were sentries somewhere. He had to get past them. He had to get to the fort.

On his belly Ike crawled through the long grass, gritting his teeth to keep them from chattering. Thirty yards from the pool. Ike spotted the first guard and inched his way past him, sweat breaking out on his forehead and lip. He kept crawling until he was certain he was out of sight of them, then staggered to his feet and struck out for the fort, heading south. Sometime, close to morning, the palisades of Fort Gibson loomed before him. Wounded, exhausted, and cold to the bone, Ike stumbled the last few yards to the gate.

"I made it, Uncle Shad," he whispered when the guard on duty challenged him.

Later Ike learned that of the one hundred twenty-five men at the haying station at Flat Rock Ford, nineteen survived. In the mad dash for freedom by the mounted troops, fifteen had made it. Three others besides himself had successfully hidden either in the long prairie grass or in the runoff pools from the Grand River, then sneaked through the enemy lines at nightfall.

Two days later the same Confederate force that had wiped out most of his unit struck the supply train at Cabin Creek, attacking shortly after midnight. One hundred wagons were burned and another one hundred thirty were captured by the rebel army, along with a million and a half dollars in cargo.

By the time Ike had recovered from his wound, his regiment was transferred to Arkansas, first to Little Rock, then Fort Smith. In early spring of 1865, the telegraph chattered with the news of Lee's- surrender at a place called Appomattox. Then it clattered again with the tragic word of President Lincoln's assassination. But the war was, for all intents and purposes, over. One after another, the armies of the Confederacy gave up the fight. On June 23, 1865, Brigadier General Stand Watie surrendered his troops at Doaksville, the last Confederate general to do so.

 

Brown leaves raced across the lane in front of Ike's horse, tumbling over one another in a helter-skelter game of tag. Ike ignored the uneasy dancing of his horse and gazed at the house. From a distance it looked as grand as its name implied, but the closer he came to the big house at Grand View, the more signs of neglect he saw.

Four days ago—the end of October—he had been mustered out of the army. He had come home to see his mother, but he was none too sure of his welcome. He rode around to the kitchen at the rear of the house. Smoke curled from the chimney. Ike dismounted and looped the reins around the branch of a bush, leaving the horse to crop at the tall grass.

He stepped inside and saw a woman standing at a worktable, her back to him. Then she turned, wiping her hands on her apron. It was his mother—older, heavier, grayer, but she still possessed full cheeks and big doe eyes. She stared at him in shock.

Hastily, Ike removed his hat and held it uncertainly in front of him, nervously fingering the brim. "Hello, Momma."

"Ike?" Phoebe took a step toward him, still with a look of doubt. "It is you," she cried and ran to embrace him, then tearfully framed his face in her hands. "I thought I was dreaming, but you're here. You're truly here."

"I wasn't sure you'd want to see me. I . . ." He fumbled over the words, fighting the blur of tears in his own eyes and the happiness that choked his throat.

"Not want to see my own boy? I'm your mother." She drew back to look at him, still holding his arms as if he might slip away. She smiled, almost teasingly. "At least, you're not wearing that awful blue uniform anymore." She clutched at him again, unable to contain her happiness. "Just wait 'til Miss Temple sees you. And Miss Eliza." Taking him by the hand, like he was a little boy again, Phoebe led him into the main house and called loudly, "Miss Temple! Ike's here. He's come home!"

Within minutes he was engulfed in more welcomes as Temple, Eliza, Susannah, and Sorrel swarmed around him. None of this was what he had expected, not after the way he had run away to join the army. Before he knew it, he was sitting at the table with a plate of food in front of him.

The knife and fork were in his hands, but he couldn't take that first bite. "Momma, I have to tell you about Uncle Shad. He—"

"We know," Eliza inserted. "Jed—Major Parmelee told us about him . . . about his bravery."

"He was brave, Momma. He was about the bravest man I know."

"He always was. Gracious, when I think of the way he used to sneak into that school to get the lessons you left for him, Miss Eliza ..." Phoebe shuddered expressively, then smiled. "Our mammy would have whipped him within an inch of his life if she had found out. But that didn't stop him. He was determined to get an education."

"I know," Ike murmured.

She reached over and affectionately squeezed his hand. "I wish your father were here."

"They'll be home soon, Phoebe," Temple assured her.

Ike hesitated. "I . . . wouldn't count on that, Miss Temple."

"Why?" Her look of alarm bordered on fear.

"They're fine," he said quickly. "I saw them last month in Fort Smith when they attended that meeting with the Federal commissioners. I didn't get to talk to them, though, but they were all right."

"Why won't they come home? The war is over."

"Miss Temple, you have to know there's a lot of bad feelings between the Cherokees who fought for the Union and the ones who fought for the South . . . especially after the commissioners told the delegates from all the Indian Nations that they had forfeited all rights to their tribal lands and annuities when they joined the Confederacy. The whole Cherokee Nation is being held accountable for the actions of Stand Watie and his rebels, even though half the Nation remained loyal to the Union cause. They have to make a new treaty, give up some of their land and their rights, and guarantee Cherokee citizenship to former slaves."

"You're saying that . . . it's not safe for them to come back—that there might be reprisals?"

Ike nodded, wondering if she knew how devastating the war had been to the Nation. Within the boundaries of the Indian Territory, most of it had been fought on Cherokee soil. Practically anywhere a man rode, he would find charred ruins, fields choked with weeds, and abject poverty where there had once been prosperity. From what Ike heard, only one other area had suffered more damage than the Cherokee Nation, and that was the swath of burned ground Sherman had left behind him in his march to the sea. Ironically, much of that burned ground included the Cherokee's former homeland in Georgia.

"Temple, it isn't that they don't want to come home—" Eliza began.

"I know," she retorted crisply, fighting against the despair she felt. It seemed the feuding was never going to end. Never.

"Maybe I shouldn't have said anything," Ike murmured.

"Nonsense. It is always better to know these things.," Eliza declared, clasping her hands together and resting them on the tabletop in an attitude that dispensed with the subject. "You haven't said what your plans are, Ike, now that the army has discharged you."

"I don't know. I'm not sure." He shrugged, then glanced at his mother. "I met this girl in Fort Smith. Her name is Ginny. I think you'd like her. She's almost as pretty as you."

"Now you sound like your father with all that sweet talk." But Phoebe beamed at him just the same.

"I thought I'd go back, maybe find me a job, save up some money to go along with what I've got left of my army pay, and get a place of our own somewhere."

"Why don't you bring her here?"

"No, Momma. I'm a free man now. I want to work my own land, have my own place. I have to. I know you don't understand that, but I promised Uncle Shad."

 

 

 

 

 

Part III

 

 

The houses and cabins had been burned. Fields had grown up into thickets of underbrush. The hogs and cattle, which the soldiers had not killed, had gone wild in the woods and canebrakes. People had to start life anew—build log cabins, clear ground, plant crops, build fences.

 

—Mrs. Mary Cobb Agnew

Cherokee

 

 

 

27

 

 

Grand View

Cherokee Nation

August 1866

 

Sorrel wrestled another ear of corn off its stalk and tossed it into the cart with the others. Her whole body pricked with sweat as she paused and lifted the hot weight of her long red hair off her neck. It gave her little relief. There wasn't a breath of air stirring anywhere.

"How can you stand it, Susannah?" There was her aunt, methodically moving down the adjacent corn row, pulling brown-silked ears off the stalks, completely oblivious to the heat. "I am positively melting."

Susannah smiled at her sympathetically. "We're almost done. Only two more rows."

"I think I hate corn." Sorrel gazed at the mound of ears in the cart, certain if she never looked at corn again, it would be too soon.

"Think about how good a cool bath will feel when we're finished here," Susannah suggested.

"If I can last that long." With a heavy sigh, Sorrel turned back to the com row, only to be distracted by the steady clip-clopping of a horse's hooves. "Someone's coming." She stepped out of the corn rows to look down the lane. The air shimmered like liquid glass, blurring the rider on the black horse. The instant Sorrel spied the white star on the horse's forehead, she knew who it was. "It's Alex!"

She ran to meet him, her bonnet slipping off and dangling down her back, held only by the loosely tied ribbons around her neck. When she stopped beside the mare, she was out of breath and smiling widely.

"You're home. You're finally home." Sorrel waited for him to dismount. At almost fourteen, she was much too grown up to hurl herself at him in a childish hug, but she had to touch him, so she rested her hands on his shoulders and raised up to give him a quick kiss on the cheek, then stepped back. "I'm so glad you're back. I've missed you."

"I've missed you, too."

"I'm still wearing the locket you gave me." She reached inside the neck of her dress and lifted it out to show him. "I wear it all the time."

Alex glanced at it and remembered the trove of gold coins and jewelry he'd taken with it. They had not been the last items of value that he'd "confiscated" from someone, rebel or otherwise. In one way or another, he had managed to get and spend a considerable amount of money during his time in the army. One of his more profitable schemes had been to force local farmers to sell him their corn at a fraction of its value, then sell it to the army himself. He'd made a tidy sum for a while, but all of it was gone now.

"The locket looks good around your neck. Does your father know you wear it?" It amused, him to think how irritated the sight of it would be to The Blade, knowing that Alex had given it to her.

"No." She tucked it back inside her dress. "He and Lije haven't come home yet, although Mother expects them back anytime now that a new treaty has been signed. Did you hear that Chief John Ross died in Washington?"

"I heard."

"Everyone says his nephew William Potter Ross will be elected principal chief when the National Council meets in November."